Never Saw Blue Like That
by Xuchilbara
Summary: Simple, pure and sweet TamakixHaruhi fluff to be read if you want a smile - a songfic set to Shawn Colvin's "Never Saw Blue Like That". Originally written for LJ's ouran contest.


=======  
_Today we took a walk up the street  
And picked a flower and climbed the hill  
Above the lake  
_=======

Her hand was in his as he pulled her along, running over the plush green grasses of this very beautiful – and very expensive - park. Her hand was small and warm within his own and his thin fingers curved around it in just the right shape.  
"You'll love this, Haruhi! I know you will!" His voice was bubbling and excited as he spoke, lifting into the air and fluttering by as they ran.  
The brunette gave a small smile, stumbling slightly in her hurried pace to keep up with the blonde. "I don't doubt you, senpai, but this isn't exactly what I was thinking of when you said walk..." This was more like going for a drag, the brunette grumbled inwardly.  
She had barely gotten out the sentence before Tamaki slowed down and they came to a quick stop. "Look, Haruhi, look!" he commanded as he edged forward. He turned grandly to the female host, his cheeks flushed and bright locks tousled.  
The bright smile he beamed to her then was cheesy, reminding Haruhi of a dog particularly glad of himself for retrieving the morning newspaper.

Haruhi had to admit though, the scene was breathtaking. For all the things she muttered darkly about the rich, there were times when their money and sense of taste came in handy.  
Before her spread a crystalline blue lake that mirrored the bright rays of the sun hanging above it, it's waters brilliantly clear. She could even see assorted fishes stocking the waters, darting in and out of view under large lilly pads.  
She let lose a breath she hadn't known she had been holding and turned her gaze back to the blond, knowing her own cheeks were still stained in crimson. "Tamaki-senpai... it's lovely..."

He beamed as bright as the sun, throwing his arms open wide, "It's the perfect place!"

=======  
_And secret thoughts were said aloud  
We watched the faces in the clouds  
Until the clouds had blown away  
_=======

They had set up their picnic spot then. Of course Tamaki had already engineered for most of the essentials to be there when they arrived, sparing nothing to detail. He had specifically requested that nothing be set up until they arrived, so they could be the ones to spread the blanket there on that little rise of a hill overlooking the crystalline lake, beneath the shade of a weeping willow.  
"After all, commoner's don't have the luxury of someone to spread their blankets for them," he added sternly when he had been planning all this out in a giddy rush to the brunette.  
Haruhi couldn't help but point out then that they also didn't have the luxury of someone packing them a three-course picnic basket either.  
She hadn't even known you could get wicker baskets of that size until now. She was almost afraid to look within.

Before long, the blanket was spread upon the jade green grass of the little hill. It was a dusky purple shade and looked well used and well loved, not the department-store new and sterile she had expected to see. Haruhi had to smile at that little touch – it was so like Tamaki to notice details.  
The pair doffed shoes to sit down to their lunch. When Tamaki had first come to her, his face shining as he talked eagerly of commoner picnics and ants marching away with whole chickens, she had given him the same flat look she ever did when he went into a rant. But now, as she sat back on her hands and tilted her face up to the blue expanse of the sky, she realized that this had been a very good idea after all.

The lunch had been everything she had imagined it would be – grandiose. She was amazed at the amount of things tucked into that basket and she sighed rather heavily. She tipped her head to look within the basket, wondering what else might be lurking down there. "Ah, don't you think that is an awful lot of food, Tamaki-senpai?"  
He was seated indian-style upon the blanket, a plate tucked nearly into his lap. He gave her his host club smile as she gazed into the basket. "Good company deserves good food," he proclaimed with a flourish of his fork.

"A rabbit."  
She turned her gaze back down to earth to find Tamaki laying back on the blanket, his left hand behind his head and his right stretched skyward.  
She followed his arm, then hand, then finger in mild perplexity. Then she blinked, catching sight of what he meant. A white cloud floating through the sky, two rounded points from a rounder base.  
And she couldn't help but laugh, causing the boy to look over to her with confusion written on his features.  
Haruhi waved her hand lightly as she finished with a few soft chuckles. "I'm sorry. I haven't looked at the clouds like that in years. Only you could point out something like that to me, Tamaki-senpai." She wiped a few tears from her eyes, sitting a little more forward now, looking away from him.  
The boy smiled then, his face soft and warm as his expressive blue eyes. "Haruhi?"  
She turned to look around her shoulder then, swabbing off the last few laughter tears. "Hm?"  
His smile grew in brightness, the look unmistakable – the look of someone utterly enraptured. "It's Tamaki."

There was a pause, then an answering tiny smile on the girl's lips as she nodded, the breeze playing with a few strands of her short brown hair.  
Her voice was gentle, a whisper to the softly moving wind. The name was reverent on her lips, "Tamaki."

=======  
_And were we ever somewhere else  
You know, it's hard to say  
_=======

It was done before she realized what had happened.  
Tamaki moved his left hand from under his head and, reaching forward, wrapped his fingers around her lower arm. She had glanced down just bare seconds before he gave a soft tug and sent the girl tumbling down. She didn't even have as much as a chance to make a noise at the quick move.  
She landed lightly on her back close to the blond, blinking upward in the sudden change of orientation. The sky seemed rather impassive to the whole display.  
She soon became aware though of his hand still gripping her lower arm, which he hand pulled against his chest. She turned her head to look sideways at him, her face curious as she took in her relaxed hand laying-palm up against his collarbone.  
She was met with his warm, laughing eyes, bright in their bit of mischief. And then he turned his head back up, adamant, pointing once more skyward. "A flower."  
Haruhi blinked and then shifted her own eyes upward, once more following his finger to be confronted with another bobbing cotton-fluff of a cloud. The sky was a bright blue still behind that flower fluff of white, the sun mercifully toned down by a yet another passing cloud.  
"That's not much of a flower," Haruhi replied with her typical brand of bluntness.  
Tamaki sputtered a few quick words of protest, something about impressionists and Dadism. It all only served to bring more warm laughter from the brunette.

=======  
_You've given me all you have and more  
And no one else has ever shown me how  
To see the world the way I see it now  
Oh, I, I never saw blue like that  
_=======

They spoke in quiet murmured tones to each other after that, as if unwilling to disturb the serenity of this place and this moment.  
He never let go of her arm though. He held on to it with the utmost care though, his touch light. After a while his hand slipped upward over her skin, sliding with calm ease into the upturned palm.  
She felt her heart thud, even if her eyes never left the broad expanse of the sky. The pair continued trying to pick out different clouds. Ducks, birds, trees – Tamaki even found one he declared looked just like Kyouya, though Haruhi couldn't see the resemblance herself.

_Mother_, the brunette thought to herself as she turned her gaze briefly to Tamaki. His eyes were keen on the air above them, squinted in concentration at trying to pick out just the right cloud. He was almost poking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in his efforts, just like a child. _I can't remember what it was like before him anymore._

When had that happened? When had the stubborn and independent Haruhi Fujioka found herself forgetting a life beyond one solitary person? When had he come to matter so much to the commoner girl?

Life was transient, she had decided as a little girl as she had watched that smokestack looming above her and held tightly to her father's hand. People poured in and out, never ceasing, much like the water in that crystalline lake. They moved around each other, sometimes meeting and smiling, but eventually leaving.  
And she had been alright with that because she could make beautiful memories to hold onto.

And yet... now ...  
Now, everything had changed, hadn't it? And all because a boy had offered her his hand, had given her his brilliant smiles and had then showed her the very depths of his heart.  
His everything.

_This is what life is all about._

=======  
_And some things are the way they are  
And words just can't explain  
_=======

The sky slowly began it's descent into deeper shades of blue as time went on. They laid together in silence for a while before Haruhi, with some reluctance, decided it was time to go.  
She shifted into a sitting position, gently slipping her hand from the blond's own. Her now freed hand came to rest palm-flat on the blanket just to his side, her fingertips barely brushing against him. "Tamaki, it's starting to get late. We should probably go now," she stated over her shoulder, shifting to reach a hand for her loafers.

She heard a rustle next to her and then, in the next instant, a few fingers touched her chin to guide her head to look over to him.  
And what she was met with caused the brunette to pause, for time to shift and melt all around. His face was relaxed and unguarded, open to her like a book.  
His fingertips brushed her chin gently and she sat gazing at him, still dazed as the boy sat up with a smooth and graceful motion. His side was pressed against hers is an intimate closeness.  
His gaze was riddled with his emotions – the enraptured look he had given her early and utter adoration, his hopes and trepidation. His blue eyes were tinted darker, the shade of the deepening sky above them.  
Maybe he had once been part of that very sky spreading so wide above all. Had he been watching over her then too like he did now? _Did you send him to me?_

Then without a word, he closed the gap between their two forms to press those warm lips of his to hers, fingers against the underside of her chin still. And her eyes had slid close of their own volition, moving in a gentle dance to meet his lips more firmly.

There wasn't a movement, a breath or a thought. He had smelt of grass, wind and the hot spice of beating sunlight. He became the cool waters, the steady heat of the earth and the light of the skies to Haruhi as they held on to that kiss.  
He had finally moved back a fraction, just enough to break that bond of lips and hearts. His lips still ghosted upon hers, close enough to remain touching, whisper soft.  
Haruhi's eyes fluttered open. And there he was with his half-lidded blue eyes gazing into her own brown ones, his breath warm against her skin. She could feel his heart pounding through their closeness and knew her own beat in time.

=======  
_I never saw blue like that before  
_=======

Haruhi let loose a brilliant warm smile then. It touched her eyes and spread over her face in a way it didn't often do. In a way she had forgotten it could before now.  
"Tamaki?" she asked in a faint whisper.  
"Hm?" he replied, sliding the fingers from the underside of chin to follow the curve of her jawline, his gaze still capturing her.  
"You have beautiful eyes." _Deeper, more blue than the sky. Always surrounding me. Oh Mother, do you see them too? Do you see how happy I am?_

His smile broke forth in a flood of brilliant warmth.

=======  
_And it feels like now,  
And it feels always,  
And it feels like coming home _  
=======


End file.
